Cookie policy

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Cookies and how they benefit you

Almost all websites – including this one – store small files called cookies on your computer or mobile phone when you browse. Cookies store information to help make sure you get the best out of a website.

We need your permission to use cookies. You don’t have to give us permission, but if you do it’ll make sure you get the best out of the site. You can also change your decision any time you choose.

Some sites use cookies to identify you personally or share your information with advertisers. We don’t do that – your privacy is very important to us. Our cookies are used to make sure the site works the way you expect – that it loads quickly, remembers your settings, and is easy to share with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Giving us permission to use cookies - or not

By law, we need your permission to store cookies on your computer or device. Like many organisations we need to take time to make sure the website complies with the law, and we’re working very hard to make sure we can record permission from our visitors.

Until we can do that, if your internet browser’s settings accept cookies on your computer or mobile device, we assume you’re happy for us to use them. On this page we’ll tell you how to delete or refuse cookies, in case you’re not happy for us to store them – but please keep in mind that the site might not work the way you’d expect if we can’t use them.

If you really don’t want us to use cookies – and you don’t mind the way that can change your experience of our website – you’re absolutely free to turn them off or delete them. If you want to do that, this very useful guide will help you.

More about our cookies

Our own cookies

The cookies we use help make sure:

The site remembers your search settings

You can add comments to our site through Facebook

The site remembers your preferences about colours, text size and layout.

There is no way to prevent these cookies being stored on your computer other than by not using the website. You can delete the cookies using your browser after you leave the site.

Third-party

We like to share YouTube videos with you to show how your support helps us improve the lives of lesbian, gay and bi and trans (LGBT) people. YouTube wants to download ‘third-party’ cookies to your computer through our site. We can’t do anything about that at the moment, without taking every video down – which wouldn’t be a fair response for other visitors.

YouTube is owned by Google and is covered by their privacy policy. Please read Google’s privacy policy to find out how they use your data. You are free to disable YouTube’s cookies through your browser’s settings, or to delete them from your computer or device at any time - but remember that if you decide to disable them it will change the way you see and use our website.

Social website cookies

We know that Stonewall supporters like to have their say on our work, and to share information with their friends. So, we have ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ buttons on some pages to help you link to pages on Facebook, Twitter and other websites.

We use tools from AddThis to give you lots of ways to share pages. Please read their privacy policy to find out how they use cookies. Because they link to lots of sites, you might have – and you’re free to choose – totally different privacy settings for each different site. Again, that will change the way you can use our sharing tools.

Anonymous visitor statistics cookies

We want to know that our website helps us fight homophobia, biphobia, transphobia – and to do that we need to make sure it looks, feels and reads well for our visitors. To help us do that we use Google Analytics to learn lots about our visitors – including which countries they’re in, what sort of computers or devices they’re using, how long they read pages for, and which pages they see. It’s not about identifying individual users – it’s all about getting a clear idea of how we need to improve the site so it works well for everyone.

Google Analytics also helps us learn how people find out about the site – for example, which search engines they use, and which words they use to search. This helps us make sure many more people can learn about what we’re doing to promote equality for everyone.

Please read Google Analytics’ privacy policy to find out how they use your data.

Turning cookies off

If you really don’t want us to use cookies – and you don’t mind the way that can change your experience of our website – you’re absolutely free to turn them off or delete them. If you want to do that, this very useful guide will help you.

If you’re worried about spyware – creepy programmes that track you and target adverts at you – we want to be absolutely clear that we don’t use it. Most anti-spyware programmes simply delete cookies that they think come from spyware – and, as we’ve said, you can always do that with cookies from this website. You can learn more about managing cookies with anti-spyware programmes.

The cookies Stonewall uses:

Cookie name

Description

_ga

Used by Google Analytics to distinguish users.

_gid

Used by Google Analytics to distinguish users.

_gat

Used by Google Analytics to manage requests.

__utma

Used by Google Analytics to distinguish users and sessions.

__utmt

Used by Google Analytics to manage requests.

__utmb

Used by Google Analytics to determine new sessions/visits.

__utmc

Used by Google Analytics to determine new sessions/visits.

__utmz

Used by Google Analytics to determine the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached the site.